Meet Zarya. According to Blizzard, she is a Russian soldier who is one of "world's strongest women." Here's Blizzard's explanation of Zarya, who was revealed during a PAX East presentation:

We've been hearing a lot of discussion among players about the need for diversity in video games. That means a lot of things. They want to see gender diversity, they want to see racial diversity, they want to see diversity along the lines of what country people are from. There is also talk about diversity in different body types in that not everybody wants to have the exact same body type always represented. And we just want you to know that we're listening and we're trying hard and we hope Zarya is a step in the right direction.

Well, she certainly seems kickass!

Her abilities also sound rad — click on the top left magnifying glass to take a closer look:

Previously, in response to the criticism to Overwatch's female characters, Blizzard said that they wanted to build a game that could be enjoyed by "everyone":

We want everybody to come and play. Increasingly people want to feel represented from all walks of life, everywhere in the world. Boys and girls — everybody. We feel indebted to do our best to honour that.

With Zarya, they're proving that this wasn't just talk. Awesome. It really is cool to see more body types represented in games, you know?

Zarya isn't the only character that Blizzard revealed today. There's also McCree, a badass cowboy gunslinger:

Curiously, one of McCree's abilities is called "Dead Eye," and it lets you take the time to line up headshots. Kind of reminds me of a similar ability in Red Dead Redemption, as it works in a similar way, and it's also literally called Dead Eye. I guess McCree kind of looks like John Marston too. Weird.

If you happen to be at PAX East, you'll also note that Blizzard heavily features its women characters in the Overwatch booth. Here are a couple of pictures, snapped by Stephen Totilo:

I don't quite get how dead eye will work in practice. Is it that McCree has to remain stationary and it targets whoever remains in his FOV during the charge? I wouldn't think that would be too effective in a fast paced game.

It looks like everything else because of it. Everyone's trying to ape Pixar these days, the style is everywhere. If the goal behind the Pixar art direction was to give Overwatch a unique style in the same manner as Team Fortress 2, it completely misses the point.

Nice, I'm not sure how one could realistically put the expectation for an insane amount of choice for everyone on any game, though. I mean, black people in the game are all super fit and despite a new muscular woman, now there's no representation for a larger woman... How do you pick and choose who to represent and is that actually enough? Despite a more critical lens on female representation, this still isn't a lot of diversity holistically speaking. Perhaps the mere existence of multiple body types for women is representation and acknowledgement enough? I seriously don't know, I mean whose decision is it to add body types for representation purposes? Do fans decide? What if there are more calls to have bigger women, will they be lambasted for not respecting women despite clearly listening?

It's cool, totally like the new character and I'm always for variety. I'm just trying to see this from the perspective of a company or a male designer who may create things from what they understand and is trying to empathise with another perspective despite having demands thrown at them. Sometimes, I think it might be better if we acknowledge that several thousand years of ingrained misogyny might be a tad difficult to shake and speak a little more empathetically when we ask for consideration. Ignorant people are not always evil but sometimes I don't think certain groups understand that. Nonetheless, this is cool and the new character seems like it had some real thought in the design.

Thanks for your comment, you summed up my own thoughts really well. I think both characters are a great addition to Overwatch, but I still felt a bit... Odd... Over the whole thing. It's great that Blizz are listening, but I wonder what the next bought of criticism will be.

Exactly, it's very difficult to say when something is 'not enough' or when you have finally reached the satisfactory amount of representation for this to be a respectful game. If you ever find a line, that will quickly become a fence which people will continually hop over and stop at simply to get that label on their game.

The character looks pretty neat and more variety is great. I would prefer though that Blizzard didn't make a point of it though, and instead simply include her among whatever other colourful characters await in the final game. Atm it's like the only thing we get to know about this character is that they're providing diversity to the team. It remind's me of that 'fully gay' mage guy that was presented for Dragon Age: inquisition; I haven't played the game so his sexuality is a shallow defining trait until I do. Then when I do, I'll be all like, "hey it's that gay guy." and that would be a bit of a sad start to participating in their character development.

I really think that cowboy guy lacks like 1~2 abilities. He could really be buffed with some more minor skills like a whip or Molotovs - the kind of things you'd expect out of Red Dead Redemption 2. I mean compared to other heroes with all the jetpacks and over technology, this guy's only got a revolver and a flashbang.

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